- 32-year-old Lindsay Clancy strangled her three kids with exercise bands, prosecutors said.
- Clancy is not the first parent to have killed her children.
Police have accused Lindsay Clancy, a 32-year-old labor-and-delivery nurse from Massachusetts, of strangling her three young children last month.
After her husband, Patrick, left to pick up takeout, Clancy tied exercise bands around her kids' throats and jumped out of a second-story window, prosecutors said, according to The New York Times.
Doctors immediately pronounced the two 3-year-old and 5-year-old children dead at the hospital, and the youngest, an 8-month-old infant, died three days later.
Clancy is the most recent — but notably not the first — parent accused of filicide.
One of the earliest-known accounts is from Ancient Greek literature. It's the tragic story of Medea, whose husband abandons her after a long marriage. Medea poisons her husband's new love and kills her sons to get back at him.
Modern-day cases of filicide continue to unnerve readers.
One of the most famous modern cases centered around a Houston woman named Andrea Yates, who a judge convicted of murder in 2002 after she drowned her five children. Yates was later found not guilty by reason of insanity.
Two years ago, a California father named Matthew Taylor Coleman confessed to using a spearfishing gun to stab his two children, telling the FBI that he believed he had to kill them because they were "going to grow into monsters."
Rates of filicide have remained fairly steady over the years, with about 500 per year in the United States, according to a 2014 study published in Forensic Science International. Researchers found that men and women were equally likely to kill children younger than a year old, but that fathers were more likely to be the alleged murderer of a child older than one.
It's unthinkable for most parents. But, psychologically, there are five known reasons a parent might be driven to kill, according to Susan Hatters-Friedman, a forensic psychiatrist at Case Western Reserve University.
Parents might kill their child after neglecting them, just to put an end to the effects of the abuse on their body. Or a parent like Medea might want to exact revenge on a partner who they feel has wronged them.
A child could be unwanted. In cases where a person hides their pregnancy, for example, they might commit neonaticide — murder on the first day of life. Or a parent might be motivated to kill an infant because they never wanted to be pregnant or to give birth in the first place.
Another reason is that parents could believe killing their children is what's ultimately best for them, Hatters-Friedman said. A child might be sick and in extreme pain, and the parent might believe the most humane thing to do is to stop the suffering.
The final reason is that the parent might be experiencing psychosis or an acute mental-health issue.
That's what Clancy's lawyer is arguing happened to her.
"This is a situation that clearly was a product of mental illness," Kevin Reddington, Clancy's lawyer, told a judge on February 7.
Reddington said Clancy had been experiencing an episode of psychosis. Psychosis is a broad category of mental illness that can, if untreated, bring on psychotic symptoms and mood disorders, Hatters-Friedman told Insider.
Clancy had been prescribed an antidepressant that led to "extreme insomnia," she wrote on Facebook, according to The New York Times. She was also on more than a dozen other antidepressants and mood stabilizers, her lawyer said. There's also a possibility that she was experiencing postpartum psychosis, he said.
"Postpartum depression is a specific type of depression occurring in a specific context of being postpartum," Hatters-Friedman said. "Postpartum psychosis has elevated rates of infanticide, of people killing their children, as well as elevated rates of suicide."
After delivering a baby, the person delivering is likely to experience a lot of pain, as well as sleep deprivation to keep up with the new infant. There's also a lot of hormonal fluctuation following the end of a pregnancy. All of these factors taken together might increase the risk of developing postpartum psychosis, Hatters-Friedman said.
When an individual is experiencing psychosis, they might be out of touch with reality, or have hallucinations and delusions.
"It can be hearing voices that aren't there, but that sound real to the person," Hatters-Friedman said. "They can also develop paranoia about others' motives."
Assistant District Attorney Jennifer Sprague said Clancy had been hearing voices, namely a man instructing her to kill her kids and herself "because it was her last chance."
With individuals who are experiencing psychosis, it can be hard to ascertain whether they commit crimes premeditatively.
"It may have been a planned thing when someone behaves in a violent manner, but it certainly may not have, and it may have been related to irritability as a symptom of their disorder," Hatters-Friedman said.
In Clancy's case, prosecutors have said they're certain the children's deaths were an act of premeditation.
She's being charged with first-degree murder, which comes with a maximum penalty of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. She's also facing three counts of strangulation and assault and battery.
When forensic psychiatrists try to determine whether a crime was premeditated, they take a look at the whole picture instead of one incident, Hatters-Friedman said. In this case, that would include Clancy's past history with her children.
She frequently posted photos to Facebook showing her and her children smiling and posing with Patrick.
Patrick said he's forgiven her, detailing their family traditions in a GoFundMe post that paints a picture of a doting wife and mother.
"Nothing matched her intense love for our kids and dedication to being a mother," he wrote. "It was all she ever wanted. Her passion taught me how to be a better father."
Hatters-Friedman said parents who experience symptoms of psychosis or even postpartum depression might be unwilling to disclose it to anyone out of fear of losing their children.
Hatters-Friedman stressed that postpartum depression should not be stigmatized. "It's not like mental illness equals killing your kids," she said.
"The important thing is if someone you love is having symptoms, if you're having symptoms, to get in for an evaluation and for treatment, because the whole thing is we want to get people treated so we can improve their quality of life, improve their relationships with their kids and with their family."